About the Instructors

Traci Bautista

In 2001, Traci Bautista left a successful career in the corporate world to pursue her passion for art, launching her creative business endeavor treiC designs. Traci is now an accomplished instructor, author and mixed media artist. Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Traci climbed the corporate ladder in Silicon Valley, marketing high-tech start ups and brands like IBM and Animal Planet. She worked as a graphic designer, event planner, marketing director, professional cheerleader, elementary art teacher, fashion designer, and web designer —to name just a few positions.

Traci contributes her success as an artist to her past experiences and innate drive to explore and create without boundaries. Her passion for sharing art has led her on a worldwide tour, teaching mixed media workshops in handmade books, art journaling, collage, art marketing, and surface design. Traci is the author of the bestselling book, Collage Unleashed, and her new book Doodles Unleashed, will be released January 2012.

Her art has been featured in over 15 art/mixed media books and 40 craft magazines, including Somerset Studio, Altered Couture, cloth.paper.scissors, Art Journaling, Art Quilting Studio, Belle Armoire, and Craft. She has been a regular guest on DIY/HGTV Craft Lab. Her creative business includes designing licensed product lines, Collage Pauge adhesive, and {kolLAJ} paper crafts.

Cathy Johnson

Cathy Johnson has worked as a writer and artist for more than 25 year, writing over 35 books on art and natural history. Her most recent book Artist's Journal Workshop: Creating Your Life in Words and Pictures, was released in June 2011. Cathy has been a contributing editor, writer and illustrator for The Artist’s Magazine, Watercolor Artist and Country Living for over a decade, and was staff naturalist for Country Living.

Cathy has conducted workshops on painting and field sketching for the national Sierra Club, the Missouri Department of Conservation, and the Martha Lafite Thompson Nature Sanctuary in Liberty, Missouri. She has also taught independent painting and sketching workshops coast to coast for various watercolor societies and workshop organizations including Maine Coast Workshops and the Nevada Watercolor Society. Her artwork is in collections in the United States and Canada, Australia, Germany, Canada, England, Scotland and Wales.

Cathy has been a resident of Missouri all her life. She was born in Independence and has lived in Excelsior Springs area since 1969. She has recently remarried, happily, to her best friend and knight, Joseph Ruckman.

Hobbies (more rightly considered obsessions) include travel, Celtic myth and history, drawing, reenacting, and journaling. And among those things that are most important in her life are nature and solitude, creativity, music, family and friends, honesty, humor, and love. What else does one need?

Michael Mattesi

Michael Mattesi has been contributing his skills as a professional production artist on many award-winning projects and has simultaneously been instructing FORCE drawing for the last twenty years. A brief client list includes Pixar, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney Consumer Products, Marvel Comics, Hasbro Toys, ABC, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, DreamWorks/PDI, The School of Visual Arts, Peking University, Art Center, Nickelodeon and LeapFrog. Michael’s students work in all fields of the industry and have themselves gained prestige for their abilities.

Michael’s FORCE book series, now published in three languages, have sold thousands of copies and growing. In May, the third FORCE book, FORCE Animal Drawing was released.

Michael lives in northern California with his wife and two daughters. Visit him at Drawingforce.com and connect with Michael on Facebook.